


Flee the Scene (Blame the Moon)

by Silent-Wordsmith (Shatteredsand)



Series: Awkward Conversations [8]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Denial of Feelings, F/F, I made shit up, Minor Violence, Misunderstandings, Multi, Polyamory, These Beautiful Dumbs are Dumb, Vampire/Werewolf Mythology Bullshit, acceptance of feelings, feelings talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-15 07:15:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5776513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shatteredsand/pseuds/Silent-Wordsmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And if I fall…It never happened, there is no proof. I’d blame the moon, but she’s been hiding. She’s been hiding behind you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. There’s a Hole in the Earth (This is the End, Somewhere)

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually Fic Nine, not Eight. Alas, Fic Eight is being particularly stubborn and isn’t technically required reading for this to make sense, so I decided to stop hiding behind that incomplete and just fucking post something already. Sorry for the wait, guys. I’ll try and be better.

Danny wakes up. Arms around her waist, her hips. Faces buried in the crooks of her shoulders. Soft puffs of breath ghosting along the skin of her neck on one side. Preternatural stillness, the utter stillness of death, against the other. A moment of content, of bliss, of ignorant peace.

Then she breathes in—lavender and chocolate, the musk of ancient books and cutting iron, cured leather and sex and desperation—and feels the binding still cinched around her throat.

The events of the previous night come rushing back. The “gift”. Carmilla’s smug smirk, her knowing eyes. Laura’s attempted admonishments. Danny’s own trembling fingers and shuddering breaths. The sudden, aching arousal. Laura’s wide eyes and gaping mouth as Carmilla took the collar from Danny’s limp, shaking hands to fasten it around her bared throat. “Good girl,” Whispered in her ear, low and dark and full of all the promises Danny hadn’t even known she’d wanted the other girl to make. The blind obedience. The mindless _submission_.

Danny’s stomach turns, nausea clawing at the back of her throat. She’d _submitted_. She’d submitted to _Carmilla_ , of all people.

Danny Lawrence, firstborn daughter of Gail and Patrick Lawrence, Second to Alpha Alexis of the Summer Society Pack, had submitted. Not to her alpha, which was right and proper and the way it should be, or even to her chosen mate, which was understandable and excusable. But to a dead thing. A leech that had confessed to centuries of deception and murder. A creature the likes of which Danny and the pack would hunt were it not for its treason against its creator, were it not for Laura’s emotional attachment to it and Danny’s emotional attachment to Laura.

Mircalla Karnstein, long dead countess of Styria, sired spawn of vampiric master too ancient to still have a true name, seductress for an evil old and cruel enough to think itself a god, a _monster_. And Danny had bared her throat to her, had whimpered and whined and begged like a faithful dog asking its owner—its _master_ —for a treat.

Danny doesn’t have a master. At Silas, she stands second only to her alpha, and only for now. In the entire world, she is beholden only to her mother, alpha of the Lawrence Pack—Danny’s true alpha—and to her father, her mother’s second. She has been born and bred to become the alpha of her pack once her mother chooses to retire. She bows her head to no man, takes orders from only the select few, and she does _not_ submit to undead creatures of the night who would rip out her spine and beat her with it for their own amusement. Who only stays her hand only for the sake the girl they both love.

She does not, cannot, leave her throat exposed to a thing that would tear into it just to hear her scream.

“And we’re back to the existential crisis again.” Carmilla’s voice, rough with sleep and the vocal exertions of last night, interrupts Danny’s thoughts. “I thought I was the brooding creature of the night in this relationship; get your own shtick.”

Something about the way Carmilla says “this relationship”, as if there is anything between them other than mutual hatred and lust and love for Laura, raises Danny’s hackles. Or maybe it’s the way the vampire’s words had sounded more playful than biting, more fond than annoyed, like she was talking to Laura rather than Danny.

Danny all but throws herself from the bed—from Carmilla—hands clawing at the collar around her neck. Laura starts into consciousness at her sudden departure, but Danny barely even notices her sleepy “what’s going on?” She has to get the damned collar off, and she has to get out of this godsforsaken room, and she needs to breathe away from the overwhelming scent of everything that had occurred last night.

Finally, finally, the latch comes undone and Danny is stripping the leather from her skin like its burning. A crushing wave of something that feels painfully similar to loss crashes over her as she hurls the collar at Carmilla’s face. She catches it easily, her eyes never leaving Danny’s face, watching her carefully. Like she thinks Danny might break. It’s not an expression that belongs on her face with regard to Danny. This isn’t the way of them.

“We,” Danny gestures between herself and the still prone vampire, “don’t _have_ a relationship.”

Her heartbeat stutter-stutter-stutters and trips, but it isn’t a lie. It _isn’t_. She’s dating Laura, and Carmilla’s dating Laura, but _they’re_ not dating. They don’t even like each other, can barely stand to share the same space without insults or fists flying.

They share a lover, nothing else. And this is _not_ a relationship.

“Oh, pumpkin.” Carmilla looks almost pitying, her words dripping with the compassion usually reserved for Laura and Laura alone. Danny wants to wipe that look off her face. With her fists. “We’ve been in a relationship since I wrapped my bare hands around your throat, and you let me.”

“No. That isn’t. We weren’t. I didn’t.” Danny doesn’t know what she’s trying to say, doesn’t have the words for how completely wrong Carmilla is. For how utterly right it feels when Danny _knows_ it’s wrong. They might have managed to tone down the overt hostility—for Laura’s sake—but it’s still there, brimming beneath the surface of Danny’s skin, simmering and trying to claw its way out into the air. The need to snap, lash out, sink her teeth into Carmilla, mar all that pretty white skin with Danny’s teeth. It’s still very much there. Even if she knows it’s a fight she wouldn’t win, couldn’t win, the _want_ is there. To try, to make the attempt (to fail, to be forced down and be held there. To writhe against the monster above her, and know that there is no escaping).

Laura is blinking rapidly, head swiveling between the two of them like watching a tennis match, wide eyes and furrowed brow. “Seriously, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know!” Danny doesn’t mean to shout, especially not at Laura—this isn’t her fault—but she feels exposed in a way that has nothing to do with her nudity.

The scramble to gather her clothing is furious and uncomfortable in a way Danny has rarely experienced. She’s never been one for one-night stands, for the morning after awkwardness. She’s had her share, a drink too many here and particularly persuasive dance partner there, but she’s not familiar enough with the protocol to feel comfortable with it.

Worse, she shouldn’t have to be doing it all. This isn’t a one-night stand, the room of a stranger. This is Laura’s room, her lover’s room, and she shouldn’t be skittering about like some low, crawling thing to escape.

“Danny, what’s wrong?” Laura again, because Carmilla is too busy drilling her piteous gaze into Danny’s shoulder-blades.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I just…” Danny shakes her head, unable to communicate what she wants, what she needs. She doesn’t know. “I need to not be here right now.”

“Danny,” Laura starts, but Carmilla’s hand is on her arm and the vampire is shaking her head slowly. All that misplaced compassion all over her face, and Danny hates her right now. More than she has ever hated anyone else before. More than she’d hated her when she and Laura had their not-break-up and Carmilla had been carefully cultivating her own not-a-relationship with Laura, and Danny had been so sure that was the reason for their dissolution.

“Let her go, Laura.” And Laura stiffens at her given name, because Carmilla never uses it unless something is _wrong_. “She needs to go.”

“Fuck you.” Danny snarls. How dare this leech deign to decide she knows what Danny needs. How dare she speak for her, as if Danny were somehow incapable.

How dare she be right.

Danny is shuffling into her clothes with more haste than care, sloppy and wrinkled and looking every inch like she’s about the make the walk of shame this emphatically isn’t.

Only, it is, isn’t it? Because she is ashamed. Ashamed of the way she’d whimpered at the sight of the leather in its box, of the way her fingers had trembled when she’d picked it up, of the way she’d turned her head and bared her throat without a second’s thought when Carmilla had taken it from her. She is so, so ashamed of all the things Carmilla had done to her last night, and all the ways she had enjoyed them.

“I’ll call you.” Danny tosses out over her shoulder as she’s leaving the room, a disorganized mess lurching through the doorway with one shoe still in her hand and the bitter taste of disgrace thick on her tongue.

OooO

Elsie almost asks her something when Danny makes it back to the Summer Society House, but the instinctive bearing of teeth and the growl echoing low in her throat warn her off well enough. Danny feels like a wounded animal, and she’s acting like it.

The other girls leave her alone after that, quietly moving the fuck out of her way as she makes her way up into her own room. If Alexis was there, it might have been different. She might have made Danny stop, explain herself, do something. But Alexis isn’t here right now, she’s in class, and Danny doesn’t answer to a single person on this campus except her.

_And Carmilla._

Danny flinches at the thought. It’s a lie. Last night had been...a mistake. Something just got scrambled in her brains and she made a mistake. Carmilla is not. Danny isn’t. It’s not…

No. Just no.

Danny burrows into her bed, cocoons herself in blankets and pillows in a way she hasn’t since she was a small child, still afraid of the smell of iron in the air and the reverberating crash of thunder when it stormed. The sheets are stained with the scent of Laura and Carmilla and Danny, and the things they’ve done to each other while wrapped up in them. There’s a comfort in that, in having them near—having _Laura_ near, she means—even while she tries to keep some immeasurable distance between them.

She presses her nose against a pillow, breathes in iron and old ink and yellowed paper, holds the scent deep in her chest. Then she realizes whose scent it is she’s drawing comfort right now, the _wrong_ scent, and Danny forces the air out her lungs with spiteful force. She noses around for lavender and peaches, chocolate and tea, for _Laura_. But the scents of them are so mingled, so overwhelming in all the ways they overlap, and Danny can’t isolate Laura from Carmilla.

She breathes in, nose against the fabric—iron and lavender, yellowed pages and peaches, old ink and tea—it smells like _home_ in a way she can’t even begin to let herself contemplate.

Salt and water, tears cutting down her cheeks, and she doesn’t even know why she’s crying. Doesn’t know how to stop.

And she is so, so scared.

There’s a storm, here and now, but it doesn’t shake the air even as it shakes her to her core.

This storm is inside her this time, and she’s not entirely sure how to stop being afraid of it.

 


	2. Keep Your Breathing Slow (This All Feels Wrong)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, sorry. I know I said I'd have this up, like, three days ago. But then I forgot time was a thing. So. Sorry.

“Carm, what the hell?”

To be fair, Carmilla maybe should have been expecting this. All of this. Danny’s little freak-out and Laura’s clueless worry. But she’d thought, foolishly, that the freak-out would come before. That the trial would be in getting Danny to put the damned collar on, in making her acknowledge that she wanted to submit, to be owned. She hadn’t anticipated how easily Danny would cave in to the pressures of her nature once Carmilla had presented her with the option, or how strongly Danny would fight against the reality of it once she’d done it. Maybe she should have. Maye she should have known that this was going to happen because the idiot dog couldn’t just accept the way of this, the way of them, with a bit of grace.

Couldn’t accept _Carmilla_.

That stings, a bit. More than it should. More than it would have before she’d given the mutt the fucking collar in the first place.

“That didn’t go the way I was expecting.”

“Carmilla.”

“What do you want me to say, cupcake?” Carmilla shrugs, clings to her carefully crafted façade of indifference. “Danny’s got a coupla hard realizations comin’ her way right about now, and she’s freaking out about them.”

“Since when do you and Danny talk about what freaks each other out?” Laura sounds almost hopeful, that they’re going to suddenly get along like a trio of best friends. That isn’t how it works, of course. Relationships are hard enough without factoring in all the supernatural bullshit tangled up in theirs.

“We don’t. But I’m very much one of those hard realizations, so it was difficult not to notice.”

“Can you, please, just tell me what you’re talking about? It’s too early for riddles.”

Carmilla sighs heavily, trying to think about how to word it in a way that Laura can understand, how to put something that exists outside the realm of human comprehension into words that will make sense to someone who was never meant to have any idea about any of it. This wasn’t meant to be explained, to be learned. It is something felt, something lived. They don’t speak of it.

Only, Laura is looking at Carmilla like she’s going to make this all make sense, so speak of it she must.

“A long time ago, when there were more of us…werewolves had a specific role to play in our world. They kept us safe when the daylight weakened us, and in return we protected generations of their packs, gave them a fraction of the wealth and prestige that we’re so easily able to acquire with all our unending time.

“They came to need us. In ways we did not need them. They’re still mortal; they live long and they stay healthy, but they die, they breed, they _evolve_. They evolved to serve us better. They’re still wired that way, Laura. _Danny_ is still wired that way.

“She doesn’t understand it. They haven’t served as our hellhounds in generations, they don’t speak of it anymore, I don’t think. She sees last night differently than you or I do. Submission means something different to her kind than it does to yours or mine. She doesn’t realize that she’s allowed to submit to me without it being a betrayal of everything she knows.”

Laura doesn’t look like she understands, not really. That’s probably Carmilla’s fault, too. Because how the fuck is she supposed to explain the complicated history, the ties that bind, between her kind and Danny’s. The intricacies of claiming a wolf, of claiming dominion over a living being—a being strong enough to kill her—Carmilla doesn’t have the words for it. She doesn’t understand the process fully, herself, she knows that it works, that something is done on both ends and the pact is made—she’s done it before, had hellhounds bound to her and her mother centuries ago—but she cannot explain to Laura.

The loss of self in the exchange, both senses of self, the way it only works if both are willing, if both are willing to help the other _find_ themselves again…Carmilla speaks eleven languages, and none of them are enough to even begin to describe it.

“So, what do we do?”

“We give her a bit of time to work it out. If she wants to be an obstinate ass about it, we show the fuck up and make her work it out.”

“We just…wait?”

“For now.”

OooO

Laura is not a big fan of waiting. Especially not when she thinks there’s something she could be doing to help. She’s not sure, exactly, what could done in this instance, but she feels like she should be doing something other than periodically sending Danny text messages reminding her that Laura loves her and that she can come by the room whenever she’s ready. The problem being that it’s been two days, and Danny is, apparently, still not ready. Laura hasn’t seen her at all since that morning when she’d run out; she’s even been absent from Brit Lit.

It makes Laura nervous and deeply uneasy. It feels too much like their not-a-break-up. At least she’d been able to see her in class then, even if she had been alternating between glaring at her and these soft, longing looks that made Laura feel way worse than the glaring had.

She feels like—she is _terrified_ that—this is how it ends. That her, Carmilla, and Danny cannot go on as they were any longer. That they’ve reached some kind of breaking point without any of them realizing. That something in them had snapped that last night, and they can’t figure out how to mend it.

Carmilla has been…weird since that morning too. Distant, without being distant. Clingy without being clingy. There one moment, then spaced out and gone the next, like something is stealing her attention away.

Sleeping is harder with only two people in her bed.

She misses the steady rise and fall of Danny’s chest as she breathes, the echo of her heartbeat in Laura’s ear. The beautiful juxtaposition with Carmilla’s silent stillness. It feels wrong to fall asleep with one while the other is missing.

Laura had tried to explain it, once. But Carmilla had looked so sad, like she thought Laura was saying that she wasn’t enough—which isn’t what Laura meant _at all_ —and Laura had shut up and changed the subject quickly.

That night, in the stillness of their small bed that felt too big without all of Danny’s long limbs, Carmilla had whispered that she missed her too.

Something has to give, and soon.

OooO

Distantly, abstractly, Danny knows that she can’t go on like this. That she has to get up, change her clothes, wash her sheets, take a fucking shower, and eat a decent meal. Distantly, abstractly, Danny knows that she could die like this, dehydrate and starve to death wrapped up in these comforting scents that feel like home even when they shouldn’t.

But the thought of movement, of leaving this bubble where the real world does not exist and cannot hurt her, it’s paralyzing. Outside the bubble, her pack is waiting with worried questions Danny doesn’t know the answers to. Outside the bubble, there is Laura with hurt in her eyes because Danny has been avoiding her as a consequence of avoiding the planet as a whole. Outside the bubble, there is…Carmilla.

Cold, dark, dead thing with surprisingly gentle hands even when she’s being rough. Vampiric seductress that had conned Danny into this triangular relationship by playing Laura’s feelings against her. Monster in the dark who waited until Danny had relaxed, had started to think that she—that _it_ —could be trusted before it plunged the knife in. Demon in the night that had made her _like_ it. Compassionate, pitying beast that had twisted the blade in her back with sorrow in its eyes and sympathy in the lines of its face.

Outside the bubble, Danny has to deal with what happened.

And Danny doesn’t want to.

She’s not a coward. She’s always been the first to throw herself in the line of fire, the one who’d take the bullet meant for someone else. She’s been fighting for something—position, respect, understanding, attention and affection—her whole life. Danny Lawrence is not a coward, and she doesn’t take shit lying down. She never has.

But she doesn’t know how to fight this, doesn’t even know what she’s fighting. And the struggle is so hard, the battle so all encompassing, outside the bubble. Danny isn’t a coward, and she isn’t running away.

She’s just…shoring up her strength.

OooO

On day three, Carmilla has officially had enough of waiting. She can feel the stupidest smart person she has ever met—and she’s met Lola Perry, remember—refuse to come to any kind of terms. She has felt, in the echoes of a bond there but not, a giant turn small. And, gods help her, she isn’t about to sit on her haunches for another godsforsaken second while the idiotic mutt lets herself rot.

She thinks about telling Laura, about taking Laura with her. This relationship has more to do with Laura Hollis, after all, than it’s ever had to do with Danny or Carmilla. But, in the end, she doesn’t. Not because Laura isn’t involved or because Laura doesn’t deserve to be kept informed of her— _their_ , now?—girlfriend’s steady decline and, hopefully, her subsequent revival. But because, at the end of it all, this is the one thing that isn’t about Laura at all. It feels almost blasphemous to consider making her a part of this.

Humans—and Laura is still so preciously, preciously _human_ —have no place in what’s about to happen.

 


	3. You're My Storm (In the Center of Eclipse)

Carmilla considers just appearing in Danny’s room, but she figures that she already has ties to the Summer Society and she might as well use them. She deliberately trips every single one of the Society’s alarms as she approaches, because sometimes it’s good to remind the hunters that they too can become prey. That on this campus, there are none who hunt her.

She hears the first patrol before she sees them. Slowly, they melt out of the trees to surround her. She doesn’t stop for them, doesn’t even slow down—she’s moving at a languid stroll, so slowing down would bring her to a crawl—and they don’t try to stop her. Smart girls.

Carmilla recognizes the leader, once she’s decided to stand up on two legs. Carmilla almost laughs. She recognizes her, not by face—though that dings the haze of memory as well—but by the line of scars cut into the skin at the curve of her hip.

That had been a good few weeks, back in 2010…

“Countess Karnstein.” Alexis  says, lowly but not without respect. Not without fondness.

“Lexi.” Carmilla pointedly gives her a long, hard look from head to toe. Carmilla would never stray from her girl or even her wolf, but she still has eyes and that’s an awful lot of attractive skin being bared in her general direction. “You look good.”

“You look better. But I think we all know that you’re not here for me.”

The wolves surrounding her shift their feet, restless.

“Baby wolves?” Carmilla says instead of answering Lexi’s implied question.

“Are you going to sleep your way through this year’s recruits as well?”

“Nah.” Carmilla shrugs. “I wouldn’t want to bring the wrath of a tiny would-be reporter down on your pack. Packs quite the punch for a five foot nothing, ya know.”

“I think they’d be a bit more concerned about my second’s wrath.”

“Then they’d be idiots. Red’s big, but Creampuff is relentless.”

Lexi arches her brow at that, the smirk on her face telling Carmilla exactly what she thinks about that. Carmilla smirks back, because the dog isn’t wrong.

“What are you doing here, Carmilla?”

“How long have you been running maneuvers out here, Lexi?”

She rolls her eyes at Carmilla’s deflection, but answers anyway. “We’re on shift until the end of the week.”

“So, you haven’t been up at the house since Big Red’s celebration, then?”

“No. What do you know?”

“It’s not a pack matter.”

“Everything that involves even a single member of my pack is a pack matter.”

“Fine, then. It’s a pack matter. But it’s also _my_ business, and I do thank you to keep your super-sniffer out of it.”

Carmilla watches Lexi’s jaw, the muscle bunching with bitten down words, her hands clenching into fists at her side. Alexis has quite a bit of power here and now; Carmilla suspects that it’s been a fairly long time since someone’s given her orders she thought she might actually have to listen to. But Silas has always been a kingdom at the precipice of Hell, and the queen is dead.

So long live the fucking queen.

Lexi walks with her, in silence, the rest of the way to the Summer Society House. The contingent of wolves stays as well, Carmilla’s own personal honor guard. Carmilla can sense their uneasiness; feels their wary eyes on her as they trot along beside her. She wonders if any of them were part of Danny’s battalion beneath the Lustig. Probably not. Carmilla cannot imagine that Danny would have risked Laura’s life by inviting any but the most capable of the pack to the battle.

Who do they think she is, to be greeted like an equal by their Alpha whilst trespassing all over their territory. To make demands and have them abided.

“Carmilla…” Lexi hesitates at the front door, her wolves tense around them, prepared to leap and attack at a moment’s notice. “You never did say why you were here. You don’t usually come alone. Less so now.”

Carmilla is spared from answering—not that she would have; Alexis and her pack of mangy mutts are only allowed to be here for as long as Carmilla decides they are. She doesn’t owe them anything else—by Elsie flinging the front door open. “Carmilla, thank the gods. Did you bring Laura, too?”

“No. I think Gingersnap the Giant and I can sort this all by ourselves.”

“Sort what? I just want someone Danny actually listens to to tell her to get the hell up and eat an actual meal before she keels over and dies. To death.”

Carmilla frowns, eyes narrowing. She hadn’t realized it was quite that bad, that Danny was rejecting this—rejecting her—so severely. “She’ll listen to _me_.”

OooO

Her door bangs open, and Danny doesn’t bother poking her head out from her bubble of solitude before telling whoever it is to fuck off. Elsie has been coming by every couple of hours to make sure she eats some food and drinks something, which Danny appreciates because she’s not actually looking to die here or anything. She’s just…not ready to get up and go about doing living person things just yet. Soon. Maybe.

“Come on, Wünder-Pup. You’re starting to freak out the rest of your pack of suspiciously tall idiot dogs. And Laura is fucking miserable about your little pity party. Time to put on your big girl panties and deal with this.”

Carmilla.

The absolute last person— _thing_ —Danny wants to see right now, and of course she just waltzes in like she fucking belongs here. Like she has any right to Danny’s space when Laura isn’t between them. Like this isn’t her fucking fault in the first place.

Danny’s head finally bursts from her cotton cocoon, the air in the room fraught with tension painfully similar to every fucking time they’ve ever been alone in a room together since this whole menage a tois thing had started. She should have realized then, she should have been expecting it, she should have known the evil bloodsucker was going to try something. She should have seen it coming.

“The fuck are you doing here?”

“I literally _just_ told you.”

“It wasn’t enough to make me betray my pack, did you have to come rub it in my face, too?”

“You didn’t betray anyone, which you would know if you’d bothered to pull your head out of your own ass for five minutes. You submitted, you’re _mine_. That doesn’t mean that you’re not still theirs.”

“Fuck. You. I’m not _yours_!”

Without any kind of warning, Carmilla lurches forward, her hand wrapped around Danny’s throat like a bad memory. Danny’s hand wrap around Carmilla’s wrist, pulling desperately. Laura isn’t here this time, isn’t here to beg for Danny’s life.

She feels the shift start, burning beneath her skin. Her claws rend a swathe of blood and gore around Carmilla’s wrist, but the monster doesn’t let her go.

“What’s the safe word, Danny?” Carmilla growls out, like this is another game. “If you’re not mine, all you have to do is say it. What’s the safe word?”

Danny opens her mouth, willing to go along with it if it’ll only make Carmilla leave her the fuck alone. “Fuck you.”

“That’s not it.” Carmilla says, dark eyes searching. “What’s the safe word?”

“This isn’t a game! Get off of me!”

“Still not it.”

“Carmilla!”

“Danny. Do you want me to let go?”

Danny’s mouth opens, a deluge of affirmations ready to spill off her tongue.

“No.” Comes out instead. What the fuck? Yes, she meant to say. Yes, I want you to let me go. Yes, I want you to leave. Yes, I loathe you and everything you stand for and everything you have ever been. Yes, stop. Yes, _mercy_.

Somehow, this appears to be the magic word to make Carmilla’s grip loosen, if not actually release her. Blood is still dripping from her arms, staining Danny’s sheets, and Danny is a little concerned that the fact that she’s going to have to do an extra load of laundry is bothering her more than Carmilla’s hand around her throat is.

“You’re still theirs, Lawrence. I’m not a wolf, you can’t leave your pack to join mine; I don’t have one. Doesn’t mean you can’t still be mine. And Laura’s.”

_I don’t want to be yours._

The thought flits through her mind, a fraction of a second.

_I don’t want to be anyone else’s._

 Contradiction.

Danny doesn’t want to think about this, about any of it. It’s all a mess in her head, something convoluted and ugly and too much-too much-too much. It doesn’t make sense, the way Carmilla keeps taking from her, and Danny keeps giving. That’s not. That’s not how they work, they’re not like that. Like this. Carmilla doesn’t come by to be reassuring when Danny is having a hard time. Danny isn’t comforted by her presence. This is not how they operate, and everything is so skewed right now.

“I don’t even fucking like you.”

“You don’t have to. You do, but you don’t have to. That’s not what this is.”

“Then what the fuck is it?”

Carmilla finally, finally takes her hand away from Danny’s throat. Danny whimpers; it’s suddenly harder to breath without her grip. “It just _is_. It doesn’t have to be anything else.”

“Have I mentioned how much of your lame philosophy bullshit I loathe? Because the answer is all of it. I loathe it all.”

“Look. Your species was _literally_ made to serve mine. Hellhounds. Our daylight protectors.  Eventually you lot got sick of it, or maybe there just weren’t enough clans to keep up with the numbers; you procreate a hell of a lot more often than we do. You guys left, or were abandoned, or whatever. But the power is still there. The draw.”

“That is so fucked, Carmilla. Like, seriously, seriously fucked.”

“I didn’t write the histories of our species. I don’t make the rules here.”

“You tricked me into agreeing to be, what, your slave for the rest of my life? How is that not making the rules?”

“You’re not my slave, and I didn’t trick you. I can’t just snap my fingers and make any werewolf who happens to be walking by my hellhound. They have to want it. You had to have wanted it.”

“I didn’t. I _don’t_.”

“You’ve wanted it from the moment you let me put my hands on you back in October.”

“What?” Danny sputters, because no. That’s emphatically not what that was. “I just didn’t want to go all furry with Laura in the room!”

“You put your life in my hands. You’re one of the only things in this world that could even put up a fight against me, and you hung like a limp doll from my hands.”

“For _Laura_.” Danny reiterates, because somehow it feels like maybe that point isn’t getting across so well.

“For Laura.” Carmilla nods. “Which is why you didn’t feel like this right afterwards. It wasn’t about me. At the time. Last night, on the other hand, definitely was.”

That, unfortunately, Danny can’t deny. Laura had been there, of course, but it hadn’t been about her. The way Danny had looked at Carmilla, the way she had turned her head and bared her throat, the things she had said and done, the things she had felt…That _had_ been about Carmilla, as loathe as Danny was to admit it.

“So what? I spend the rest of my life playing guard dog?”

“You are just bound and determined to look at this from all the worst angles, aren’t you?” Carmilla sighs. She looks…tired. “You’re mine. That’s _all_ it means. You’re not any more my slave than you are Lexi’s. The bond is there, it’s pretty damn hard to break, but it doesn’t control you. You still have that free-will all you mortals are so gung-ho for.”

“I hate you. I don’t want to be yours.”

“If you’re not mine, all you have to do is say the safeword, gingersnap. That’s it, that’s all you have to do. But you won’t, because you don’t want to. So shut up and kiss me already. Laura’s getting worried.”

It’s stupid. It’s wrong. It’s not acceptable by literally any definition.

But Carmilla’s hand is still wrapped around her throat like it belongs there, and Danny is leaning into the touch. And she’s tired. She’s so tired. If it’s not a betrayal of pack, if it doesn’t mean everything Danny’d thought it did, if it means something completely different…Fuck, what is she even still fighting for?

So, she kisses her.

Carmilla tastes like iron, like blood, like _home_. A shudder rolls through Danny, something lost somewhere between loathing and longing. Carmilla’s hand slips from her throat, arms coming up and around Danny.

The kiss breaks, softer than anything has ever been between the two of them.

It’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong. This isn’t what they do, this isn’t how they work. They are two monsters poised at opposite ends of the board, forces in direct opposition, and when they collide it’s violent and it’s messy and it _hurts_.

“Stop thinking so damn much, Danny.” Carmilla sighs, shifting them until they’re both lying down. Danny thinks she should feel trapped. There is a murderous, bloodsucking beast lying beneath her, arms around her firmly and unforgivingly. She should feel trapped.

She doesn’t. Paradoxically, she feels _safe_.

“Seriously. You need to stop overanalyzing this to death.” Carmilla growls, the rumble echoing pleasantly up from her chest and up through Danny’s ear where it’s pressed against her. The rumbling continues, even after the words have faded, and Danny makes a mental note to freak out about the fact that, apparently, when comfort cuddling, Carmilla fucking purrs. Also, over the fact that Carmilla is comfort cuddling her. “Take a nap with me. I got up extra early to come tell you to stop being an idiot, you know.”

Danny wants to object. Nobody made Carmilla come over here. She wasn’t being stupid, she was having a perfectly valid and understandable identity crisis that was pretty much entirely _Carmilla’s_ fault anyways, she’s spent the past three days in a fuzzy half-asleep daze, she hasn’t finished “overanalyzing this to death”. But. Fuzzy half-asleep isn’t the same thing as actually sleeping, and she’s tired. She’s so, so tired. And the purring thing—while still something she’s going to mock endlessly—is actually really soothing and making her about four times sleepier than she’d been before this whole ordeal, so.

Danny is asleep before she manages to think of a witty repartee.

OooO

Laura isn’t panicking. Panic is a stupid, useless emotion that doesn’t help anyone with anything, and Laura is not panicking. Just because Danny ran away from them and hasn’t been in class and won’t return her calls or text her back and it’s been three whole days, and now Carmilla is gone too with just a note that say “stop panicking and don’t worry”. Which is ridiculous because Laura is _not panicking_ , don’t be _absurd_.

“L, chill. You’re going to wear a hole in the floor.”

“I am chill. I’m perfectly chill. This is what chill looks like, LaF.”

“No, this is what Perry looks like when I tell her I’m doing something with fire.”

“You’re lucky you still have eyebrows.”

“Science demands sacrifice.”

That isn’t even the point, but Laura isn’t actually sure what _is_ anymore, so she lets it drop. And keeps pacing. Not, to be clear, because she is panicking or worried or any such thing but because she’s stubborn and this is absolutely what chill looks like, LaF. Open up a dictionary and next to “chill” is a GIF of Laura pacing the floorboards.

Thankfully, the dreadfully anxious—not anxious, because Laura isn’t panicking, thank you very much—uh, awkward silence is interrupted by Carmilla coming back.

With Danny.

Thank God.

“Sorted.” Carmilla says with a shrug. Like whatever had happened wasn’t important. Which is stuid and ridiculous because it had been important, is still important, and Laura is going to need a little more than one stupid word to convince that things are okay again.

“And that’s my cue to go.” LaF waves, rushing out the door.

“What the holy hell?”

“Sorry.” Danny is staring at the floor, all dejection and chastisement. “I didn’t mean to make you guys worry. I just. I needed to make some stuff make sense in my head.”

“And does it?” Laura tries very hard to keep the question carefully casual. It’s not fair for her to foist her hopes that this was a onetime event freak out and that nothing has to change between the three of them. If Danny needs something different now, if the things she’d needed sorted mean that the dynamics of their relationships, then Laura is damned well going to do her very best to make sure that Danny has anything and everything she needs and wants .

“Yeah.” Danny shrugs, a more self-conscious gesture than Carmilla’s had been. “Turns out, I’m kinda an idiot. Sometimes.”

“Well.” Carmilla drawls, and Laura might actually murder her if she says something effortlessly antagonist literally five minutes after they—she, really—just convinced Danny to stop hiding and come back to them. “At least you’re our idiot.”

“Shut up.” Danny fires back, but there’s a distinct lack of heat. In fact, if Laura were a gamboling woman, she’d bet good money that that’s affection coloring the werewolf’s words.

“Ours?” Laura has to double-check. They’ve been a trio for a while now, and while there has definitely been a marked decrease in overt hostility between her two girlfriends, Laura knows that that’s how they’ve thought of themselves. _Her_ girlfriends. Not each other’s.

“Yeah, creampuff. Ours.”

Danny shrugs again, semi-shy half-smile tugging at her lips. “Yours.”


End file.
